Josh Brolin

Spike Lee’s re-interpretation of Oldboy is set to hit theaters in a few months, so expect to see a lot of ads floating around both online and more traditional media in the near future. A website called Hotel Oldboy has all kinds of posters extolling the virtues of Josh Brolin’s abode as well as a clip featuring Samuel L. Jackson delivering a less-than-hopeful message.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Oldboy is a provocative, visceral thriller that follows the story of an advertising executive (Josh Brolin) who is abruptly kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his bizarre and torturous punishment only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment.

Oldboy, which also stars Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Lance Reddick and Michael Imperioli, opens on November 27th. Are you ready for your stay?

Were you hoping for eight new images of Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen in Spike Lee’s Oldboy remake? Well Collider and HuffPo each got their own batch that you can see above and below.

Synopsis:

OLDBOY is a provocative, visceral thriller that follows the story of an advertising executive (Josh Brolin) who is abruptly kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his bizarre and torturous punishment only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment.

I’m a big fan of Quentin Tarantino’s films. I certainly don’t like all of his movies equally — Jackie Brown and Death Proof don’t really do it for me — but I rank the rest of them in the Awesome category. Reservoir Dogs was my first and still one of my all time favorite films, Pulp Fiction is a classic, Kill Bill is both an amazing homage and also a brilliant bit of bloody goodness and Inglourious Basterds is so wonderful I can still write the title correctly. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t reviewed any of his other movies here on the blog, but I think part of that stems from the idea that a lot of ink has already been spilled on Tarantino’s career and I’ve found that some things are just so close to my heart that I don’t want to write about them. Sometimes you just want to keep something for your self.

I thought about skipping a review for Django Unchained, Tarantino’s first western, but after thinking about it for awhile, I decided to dive in a bit. If you haven’t seen the movie, do it. It bummed me out that I had to wait as long as I did to see this movie, but that’s what happens when you have a kid and no babysitter. The story revolves around bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buying slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in an effort to track down a particular bounty. Along the way, Schultz trains Django to become a bounty hunter and the pair become friends to the point where Django tells King that he wants to track down his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) who was sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) a plantation owner who gets his kicks from watching slaves beat each other to death.

Considering the setting and the director, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting with this movie and it’s truly not for the faint of heart. Even I was impressed with how much blood was spilled in this film, mostly through old school gunfights and a few fights. And, as you’ve probably heard, the language is very of-the-time which translates into “incredibly racist.”

But the real heart of the story revolves around a man taking advantage of every opportunity to find the love of his life. He’ll act like a slave trader himself, he’ll kill people, he’ll play nice with the man who enslaved his wife. But, when the chips are down and it’s time to pull through, Django does everything he can to achieve his goal. Foxx does a terrific job in his role as does, well, everyone else in the whole movie. As you can expect there’s some touchy areas here, but everyone really commits to their parts and Tarantino directed them deftly. All around, Tarantino once again shows how good he can be at taking a genre he loves, mixing in his own sensibilities and even his own take on history and creating something that’s both emotionally satisfying and also fun to watch.

Gangster Squad also takes viewers to a time in our country’s past and features a heckuva hero. This time we’re in 1949 LA which has been overrun with gangsters like Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). But there’s still a few good cops around like Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) who’s a heard headed justice seeker unafraid to mix it up with the bad guys in an effort to keep his city safe. The police chief (Nick Nolte) realizes this and offers him a chance to go after Cohen and company, but only off the books. O’Mara puts a team together that includes guys played by Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Giovonni Ribisi, Michael Pena and Robert Patrick who do just that.

The film, directed Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), is actually based on real life events from the time, but, of course, punched up for more Hollywood goodness. Emma Stone plays both sides of the fence as one of Cohen’s regular lady friends and faling for Gosling’s character (who can blame her). The story bobs and weaves around, actually taking on a lot of the same story beats seen in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (a longtime favorite of mine, gotta check out that Blu-ray).

As I noted in this week’s episode of the Pop Poppa Nap Cast, posted over on my dad blog Pop Poppa, I really appreciated the bravery these men exemplified in their attempts to clean up the city. O’Mara’s the kind of classic hero we don’t see much of anymore. He does the right thing because it’s right and good and the only gain he gets out of it is the ability to live in a better world…assuming he doesn’t get killed along the way. All the other guys on the squad have similar motivations, wanting to make the world a better place for their kids, the people in their neighborhood and the like. They’re real, old school heroes who also happen to look and talk slick, shoot well and fight even better. Once again that mix of heart and action really gets me. It also helps that this movie is freaking gorgeous and looks amazing on Blu-ray, as did Django though I didn’t mention above.

I did not have very high hopes for Men In Black 3. When I first heard they were doing another film after the pretty-great first installment and the I-can’t-remember-anything-about-it sequel, I wasn’t super excited. Then I heard that they started filming without a finished script, which is never a good sign and was even less interested. However there were two basic reasons I moved it to the top of the Netflix queue. First, my wife wanted to watch it and I was fairly curious. And two, we got a great deal on a Blu-ray player on Amazon during Cyber Monday and have been itching to take full advantage of that killer picture.

Well, we just finished watching it and I’ve got to say, I was amazingly surprised with how much I dug this movie. I’m not sure if it was the low expectations or that this really is a fantastic movie (I’m thinking it’s leaning towards the latter, really), but this movie really felt like a proper follow-up to the deft mix of action, comedy and sci-fi that made the first one so great. As you may or may not know, the plot for this movie follows Agent J (Will Smith) as he travels back in time to help the late 60s version of his partner (Josh Brolin), Agent K, save the current day version (Tommy Lee Jones). Along the way, he’s also saving the world from a world-killing alien named Boris The Animal in both current and past versions.

The story, which could have gotten overly complicated — especially when you throw in fifth dimensional alien who can see all realities at once — but I thought that screenwriter Etan Cohen did a great job of making everything easy to follow without talking down to the audience. I also thought director Barry Sonnenfeld did a great job with everything from casting younger versions of Tommy Lee Jones and Emma Thompson to keeping the story moving along. Bothcerators get kudos for my two favorite bits in the movie: the fact that the late 60s aliens at MIB HQ all look like they’re from episodes of Star Trek and the whole part with Andy Warhol and the Factory. Warhol played a big early role in the punk scene that I read about in Please Kill Me, so it was fun to see an alternate, funny take on that.

The action and special effects were up there on the same level as the comedy which made this a great choice for really testing out our new Blu-ray player. It all looked so vivid, I could see all the lines on TLJ’s face (which I’m sure he’s not super happy about). At the same time, I could see every aspect of the pretty great looking aliens in both timelines, which is always a plus. Boris was especially awesome looking and well-created. My wife very correctly pointed out that he looks like a less-pale Lobo, which now makes me want a Lobo movie real bad.

But the film also has a heart to it. J wants to know more about K, but K won’t let him in for reasons that become clear(er) by the end of the film. Meanwhile, J finds the past version of K to be a lot more open and happy, so the question of why he changes starts working its way up to the same level as, how are they going to save Earth? A lot of movies with such high stakes (saving the world) tend to lose site of the personal, which is what people can actually relate to. This movie doesn’t have that problem. And, man, the reason they give or K’s distance from J, that was tough but kind of poetic. I have questions about it, but they’re not nagging.

So, all in all, I was very happy with our MIB3 viewing experience from both a story and film perspective AND a visual one. Man, that’s a pretty movie. I really think this Blu-ray thing might have a chance of catching on, you guys.

Thrashin‘s basically a genetically designed movie to be liked by yours truly considering I love Airborne, Lords of Dogtown, Dogtown and Z-Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ridiculous 80s movies. This skating flick stars Josh Brolin as a young, skating dude who meets a girl who is the sister of the rival skating gang called The Daggers. As you might expect, this causes quite a bit of tension between Brolin’s gang (filled with dudes who are named Radley and look a lot like Jason Segel) and the Daggers. My favorite ridiculous moments from the movie include the crazy skating party which includes dudes dancing on their boards and also the Red Hot Chili Peppers (one of my favorite bands of all time) and a joust between Brolin and the main bad guy where they’re skating a half pipe of sorts and trying to hit each other with, what looks like, pillows on the end of chains, kind of like a mace.

The skating is super fun and quite different than you might expect if you watch the X-Games nowadays. Speaking of which, Tony Hawk’s in this flick, though I wasn’t able to easily grab a screencap of him, so is Christian Hosoi who was the subject of the Rising Son doc I watched and really dug who I also didn’t get a cap of. Also, check out the brown haired girl in the fifth pic, that’s Sherilyn Fenn of Twin Peaks fame playing Velvet, the Daggers’ resident Betty.

I had a great time watching this movie because it’s a nice relic from its time. Plus, I’m a sucker for anything with skateboards, rollerskates, roller blades or BMX bikes (I kind of want to watch Airborne and Rad again after this, or possibly BMX Bandits). If you’re a fan of anything I mentioned in the past few paragraphs, do yourself a favor and check the movie out. It’s currently available to watch on Instant Netflix!